Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: WEDNESDAY, July 7, 1993 TAG: 9309020340
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: 2 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: SCOTT WILLIAMS ASSOCIATED PRESS
DATELINE: NEW YORK LENGTH: Medium
We associate Vaughn with drama, in movies like ``The Young Philadelphians'' and ``The Magnificent Seven,'' or his light-hearted TV hit, ``The Man from U.N.C.L.E.,'' as secret agent Napoleon Solo on NBC from 1964-68. Not comedy.
``They've used me fairly often in `Murder, She Wrote,' because I can throw everybody off. They always think I'm the killer. I never am,'' Vaughn said.
``My film work has been limited to my three-piece suit persona, which you've seen a million times, from `Bullitt' through H.R. Haldeman,'' he said. (His Haldeman won him a 1978 Emmy Award in ABC's ``Washington: Behind Closed Doors.'')
Ah, but it's that three-piece suit persona that Vaughn plays against so well as host of ``Danger Theatre,'' a half-hour split between two running parodies: ``The Searcher'' and ``Tropical Punch.''
``The Searcher'' stars Diedrich Bader as a clueless, Harley-riding hero in boots and leathers who recovers lost loved ones. He always prevails, but only after being variously squashed, torched and smashed. He never gets the girl.
The second parody, ``Tropical Punch,'' stars Adam West (star of TV's ``Batman'' series) in a dead-on lampoon of ``Hawaii 5-0.''
West plays Capt. Mike Morgan, a fundamentally stupid detective, whose crime-fighting team includes a wise-cracking aide (Billy Morrissette) and a 300-pound ex-sumo wrestler (Peter Navy Tuiasosopo).
As host, Vaughn holds this melange together, introducing each piece in his ``Robert Vaughn'' persona, the kind of officious, self-important chap who'd say, ``I'm not an actor but I play one on TV.''
Vaughn sits at a desk beneath a U.S. Department of Justice seal, flanked by a grinning, waving portrait of President Reagan and the classic photo of President Nixon shaking hands with a visibly wasted Elvis Presley.
Vaughn said he read the script, sat down with the producers and said, ``Now, the way I see what you've written here is somewhere between Robert Stack on `Unsolved Mysteries' and Peter Sellers as Inspector Clouseau. You go along with that?''
``They said, `That's exactly what we want. First half Stack, second half Clouseau.' And that's what we tried to do,'' Vaughn said.
Fox has eight shows in the can, Vaughn said. ``If the response merits it, they'll do eight more, or 80 more, or 800. I'll be there for the whole haul.''
Vaughn said the producers of ``Danger Theatre'' are interested in putting him into another sitcom, teamed with ``Searcher'' Bader.
That's the kind of career move that resurrected character actor Leslie Nielsen as a comedian in the ``Airplane!'' and ``Police Squad'' movies, and Vaughn knows it.
``Nielsen had always been a very funny guy, but he never had a chance to be funny until those pictures,'' he said. ``This is really much more like Leslie Nielsen than the bland, second-guy he's played down through the years.''
To date, one of Vaughn's more interesting career choices was to leave Hollywood.
``I moved here 12 years ago,'' says The Man from Connecticut, ``with the intention of raising my children in seasons, No. 1, and in the best private schools I could get them into.''
Mission accomplished. He said his 17-year-old son is a top-rated goalie in prep school ice hockey, ``something he would not have achieved in Beverly Hills.''
His 11-year-old daughter, who was 7 weeks old when they moved East, wants to be an astronaut and is in her third year at Space Academy in Huntsville, Ala.
``When she sees `Beverly Hills, 90210,' she says, `Why can't we live there, Dad?' I say, `You lived there for seven weeks. You didn't like it. Complained all the time. Cried for seven weeks.'''
by CNB